Given the comments here over the last couple of days about the story run on A Current Affair about the customer complaint to a Queensland newsagent, I have decided to run a quick survey on newsagent customer complaints.
Do you get many? What are the complaints about? Do you have a complaints process?
Click here to participate in the three question survey. I’ll publish the results next week.
Survey done .
Just want to add the only complaints we get are always due to home delivery customers , wet paper , no news in paper , where is my paper , car wakes us up etc
One of the happiest days of my life was when we sold our distribution area and became retailers only.
Most customers at retail level are reasonable but at the distribution level they are anarchists.
They have absolutely no respect for the hours that our families had to work to deliver their paper and if there was any hiccup in the delivery e.g. an accident with a vehicle or late delivery of papers from the publisher we would get “that’s not my problem – I just want my paper”.
Add to that the customers who would ring
us at home (yes, we were obviously far
too friendly) at 11.pm and say they had forgotten to tell us they were off their papers because they were going away.
I would politely tell them that their “delivery driver was asleep at the moment but I would stay up and ensure that he got the message before he left at 1am” and they still didn’t get the inference.
People are rude and ignorant when it comes to our industry but we don’t have to stoop to that level even if it is hard not
to do so.
Our most common complaint is about the extra freight on papers added on by suppliers ( not us). We have had the paper thrown at younge staff and told what to do with the paper. Customer hand me the cover price and walk out telling me “thats all your getting”. My husband chased after him and asked for a look at the price on the cover. When he had it in his hand he refunded him his money and suggested he should got to the other newsagency who does not charge freight (280k away). He came back and paid the right price. We have had to chase customers up and ask for the paper back or the correct price. We get virtually no other complaints. These are almost all visitors to the town. Locals know the prices.
Same here June. It’s impossible not to notices the sharp decline in complaints when you get rid of a delivery run.
We home deliver a lot papers and get very few complaints. We set a high standard for our delivery drivers and they all do a great job. It’s stressful on shop staff when we get late or no papers, but luckily this doesn’t happen often and the majority of customers are fine.
Jenny the majority of customers are jolly happy people and at times our shop sounds like there is a party going on but those who are nasty are very nasty and it can be very disturbing. Had my regular customer in this morning that brings back broken toys every year after christmas. I refunded and apologised like I have done for the last few years but also reminded her of the toys her son had broken last Saturday so I ended up refunding a little less. Her kids break stuff every time they come in and I have to smile about it!
Carol, I would much prefer to deal with home delivery problems than shop problems. Much less complex and usually not face to face.
Shop customers have varying expectations of good service, and behaviour standards for their children. Most are fantastic, it’s the minority that are a problem, usually the same impatient unhappy people that are the difficult ones.
We have had some scary ones too over the years, it’s very unnerving.
One of the reasons we sold our delivery round was the conflict it caused for our retail business. late papers, stolen papers and missed delivered sometimes led to anger in the shop, disrupting otherwise happy retail.
Our only complaints we ever had was over the home delivery run. Customers don’t care who delivers their papers but they do when they’re paper is missed or wet or there is no tv guide inserted. They then come in store and complain. The complaint is always resolved but they come to your store due to a negative experience. Since we handed the run back we have not looked back. They now come in because they want to and leave with a positive experience. I would encourage anyone to offload their home delivery, concentrate on your retail business, try out new things, change the shop around, make a buzz, do seasonal changes and what you lose on the counter stock commission you will more than make up for it on higher paying commission like toys, gifts, plush and the like. You will enjoy yourself more as well.
If only I could sell my shop as easily as you can hand back or sell a delivery run. My few customer complaints would become even fewer. It ‘s hard work running both, it’s stressful for shop staff and it’s hard for owners to give their best to both sides of the business.
In our shop 99% of the complaints would be Aust Post related, (eg the price of posting a parcel, mail thats late, internet parcel that was guaranteed to be here by xmas but doesn’t arrive til new year…) and therefore out of my control.
Those issues inside my control are dealt with either by my staff, or referred to me to sort out.
Today will be a challenge, overnight our lotto machine packed it in. So we can’t check tickets, but better today than yesterday for the megadraw!